


One Professional to Another

by jane_potter



Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan)
Genre: Birds, Drug Use, Drugs, Dubious Consent, Explicit Sexual Content, Fear Play, Horror, M/M, Pain, Sexual Violence, Slash, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-05-08
Updated: 2009-05-08
Packaged: 2017-10-26 04:26:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/278670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jane_potter/pseuds/jane_potter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jonathan Crane went hunting rumors of a blue flower that could strike fear into the soul and shatter the mind-- but Henri Ducard was not willing to let the secrets of the League of Shadows fall into just any hands.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

His hands folded neatly in front of him, Doctor Jonathan Crane, PhD, gazed at the sneering criminal across the table from him with unbreakable calm.

"Look," he said finally, quietly, and reached up to pull his glasses off, revealing piercingly pale blue eyes. "As it stands, you're facing at least ten years in jail, maybe more, once this assistant DA with her teeth sunk into you gets through. Tell me how you reduced a healthy, mentally stable 34 year-old man to a gibbering wreck in less than a minute, and I'll see to it that you do your time in Arkham-- single-cell, away from the real crazies, maybe less than a year of cushy living with free food and all the priviliges I can arrange."

The man's glower faded into skeptical consideration, only a slight lift of his lip indicating the cynicism of a career criminal who earned his living by leveraging money out of people that owed Carmine Falcone, their debts real or imagined.

"Cable TV?" he asked finally, and Jonathan nodded.

"'Bout four years back, things got too hot in Gotham and I booked it to China for a little vacation," the enforcer said. "In a drug den in Shang-hai, I ran into this fucking weird drug. Roll it up and smoke it, and I started to see all sorts of weird shit-- monsters, things crawling out of other people's skin. Messed me over real good, and I killed two guys before I came out of it. Found out later it was some kind of plant, grown on a little bit of mountain in Tibet, special order only from one source. I order a little in every few months." He smirked and ran his tongue over filthy teeth, adding conspiratorially, "For the tough cases, you know?"

Jonathan leaned forward intently, aware that his heart was suddenly racing. "Give me your source and the location of that mountain," he said, his voice very steady despite the eager tremor of his fingers.

"Or what?" the man demanded, barking a laugh.

"Or I'll testify on the stand that it is my professional opinion that you should spend the rest of your days locked in a padded solitary cell with your arms strapped to your sides, taking food intravenously and defecating through a catheter."

The enforcer's smirk vanished instantly.

Triumph burned in Jonathan's blue eyes. "Now. Where, _exactly_ , is this mountain?"

*

Composed and coolly judgemental, Henri shuffled slowly through a stack of glossy Polaroid snapshots. All of them depicted the same person, and his critical eye dissected the important physical statistics: Caucasian, male, approximately five-foot seven-inches, likely American, with dark-brown hair and notably blue eyes. He wore glasses and well-cut suits, and, in one shot which depicted him on the balcony of a reasonably well-kept hotel in Gyantse, had a nondescript leather briefcase which contained a number of papers. Nearly all of the photographs showed him in discussion with Tibetan locals-- drug dealers and minor crime lords, from the look of them.

"And he's learned the location of the blue flowers on the lower steppes," Henri said finally, glancing at the silent man who had handed him the surveillance photographs.

The soldier nodded once.

Restacking the Polaroids, Henri looked over at the forbidding Asian man who sat in a tall chair at the fore of the room, watching with glittering black eyes. As if in permission, the Asian nodded slowly-- but, out of sight of the soldier, Henri had made a discreet hand signal that instructed a positive response be given by his figurehead. The soldier was a new addition to the ranks, having arrived after Henri's ascension to leadership upon the death of the former Ra's, and he did not need to know the true identity of his leader.

"Go back and wait," Henri ordered. "When he reaches the foothills, subdue him and bring him here. Ra's al Ghul has an interest in this man that deals with criminals to steal our secrets."

*

The burlap chafed painfully against Jonathan's throat, cinched tight by a cruel drawstring knotted hard over his trachea. Inside the dim, stifling confines of the bag, his face was wet with reflected breath and his nose burned in the cold, exposed to every gust of wind that ripped through the thin fabric. Blood was dried-- or perhaps frozen-- to the left side of his face, where a single brutal blow had ended his first and final attempt to fight back against his captor. Now, tasting iron and salt with every reflexive lick of his chapped lips, Jonathan followed the powerful grip on his arm with numb obedience.

Blind and stumbling, he tripped as his arm was wrenched, yanking him over yet another spur of rock. He fell to all fours and felt a sharp fragment of stone cut into his knee. Gasping with pain, Jonathan bit down on a sob as he was forced to his feet yet again, dragged onwards and inexorably upwards. Every sucking pant of breath brought thin air into his lungs, each stab of frigid cold yielding little oxygen.

How high would they climb, and how long until he collapsed for good, no amount of yanking or beating able to bring him to his feet once more?

Oh god. This wasn't what he'd wanted when he went looking for the drug! This wasn't a criminal on the other side of a table, the wrong side of a barred jail cell or the inside of a straightjacket. This wasn't an enforcer that could be bribed or an asylum patient that could be taken advantage of, an impressionable young university student or a submissive nurse in fear for her paycheck. This was-- this was--

Adrenaline flooded his bloodstream, triggering a new set of convulsive choking sobs that Jonathan had to swallow. Biting his lip, he struggled to claw down fear so powerful that it overwhelmed every psychological defense he had ever raised, muted not in the least by every near-hysterical mental recitation of scientific dissertation. Talk of neurons and chemicals and survival instincts were reduced to meaningless words that he had applied to other people countless times, now useless and blank.

But still, still-- oh god!-- no, _no_ panic, Jonathan... _Still_ , this wasn't birds. It wasn't birds. He wrapped his mind around the thought like a drowning man snatching up a water-rotten rope, fibres fraying in the claws of a white-water torrent, and clung to it for dear life.

Over the chattering of his teeth, Jonathan heard what sounded for a moment like groaning hinges, wood on wood. A while back he had heard goats bleating, and the foreign babble of children once before that, which had been ended by the slamming of wooden doors and then silence. Was this another rutted track through another village where the townspeople would fall silent and vanish, leaving shuttered windows to stare blindly at Jonathan being marched down the deserted street?

Finding himself on suddenly level footing, he stumbled forwards in response to the pull on his arm, vicelike and painful. Jonathan had just time to process the thump of floorboards beneath his boots before he was slung violently forwards, crashing to his knees and then skidding facedown onto the ground when his useless frozen hands couldn't support his weight.

In the deafening silence that followed the slam of the massive-sounding doors, Jonathan didn't dare to move, as if any slight shuffle of motion would endanger him instantly. Heart beating frantically in his chest, he lay still where he had fallen, shivering and counting seconds as a fresh trickle of blood ran down his face, wet and hot against his upper lip.

Despite his situation, Jonathan found that as his eyes adjusted, he could make out slight details of the room beyond through a small hole in the burlap. His pale skin nearly glowing in the dimness, a young man was standing in Jonathan's line of sight, dark-haired and dark-eyed. Glancing at somebody next to him, Jonathan overheard him whisper, "Who is he?"

"A trespasser and a thief," came the answering murmur, so softly that it would have been inaudible to anybody farther from the men than Jonathan was. "Ra's has requested that I attend to this business. Study the Sun Tzu we discussed today until I return."

 _They're teaching from The Art of War_ , Jonathan noted automatically. He nearly jumped when he realised that the young man's eyes were fixed directly on him. Maybe the man could see Jonathan's eye through the hole, maybe not, but his dark gaze was so piercing that Jonathan didn't dare move.

A voice rang out suddenly, snapping something in guttural Cantonese that echoed slightly in the room. Hands seized Jonathan's elbows and lifted him bodily-- two pairs of hands, now, and so close that he flinched in surprise at having not heard the men standing over him.

Mind racing frantically, he tried to keep track of details for something, _anything_ to concentrate on. Large double doors, echoing rooms, and the sturdy staircase he was being dragged up-- the building was substantial. Between the smooth plank floors and the heated air, which smelled like pine and gunpowder and sweat and burning coal, he could tell it was an extravagant building for such a part of Tibet. Twenty-two steps in the staircase, all equally spaced and steep-- five paces forward, then a stumble over the threshold of a door-- ten more paces, but more like twelve normal-sized steps, if he hadn't been hurried-- through a heavy leather flap that hung over another door and into an even warmer room, full of incense and herbal smells--

Without warning, Jonathan was thrown to the ground again, cracking his head against a wall. He gritted his teeth and edged around gingerly to lay on his back, shoulders slumped against the base of the wall; danger be damned, he wasn't going to just lay facedown half crumpled against the wall. Hardly daring to breathe, Jonathan dug his hands into the cushioning beneath him and felt the coarse curl of sheepskin, a smoother fur with straight hairs, and some lumpy woven fabric, maybe a blanket thrown on the pile. Somebody's room? A jail cell?

Trying to regain his equilibrium, Jonathan strained his eyes and ears through the burlap sack. Neither captor made a sound to be identified by, but the blurry outline of at least one guard was visible through a threadbare spot in the burlap. Then the leather curtain over the door rustled once more-- twice, three times? God, who were these people? He'd never have known when they moved except that the occasional creaky furnishing gave them away.

"So," said a quiet voice in English. Something about the man's muted accent made Jonathan calm slightly-- _association of European voices with cultural values of dignity and civility_ , he reminded himself. It was the same man that had spoken to his student in the entrance hall, the man teaching Sun Tzu. "You are the man who has been seeking the blue flowers of Ra's al Ghul's mountain."

Jonathan said nothing. A dark shape paced a few steps forward, into a hazy shaft of light that was visible through the burlap.

"Clearly you were unaware of just how dangerous your search is," the man continued. "I suggest that you tell us your aims, and just _how_ such an initiate in the criminal underworld came to know of these flowers."

The hood was yanked off abruptly, leaving Jonathan wincing at the sudden light exposure. The room-- some cross between a bedroom and an apothecary, from what Jonathan could see-- was lit by candles that were set in mirrored holders, reflecting the light back more brightly. Grey-haired and as impeccably groomed as his smooth voice, the speaker held Jonathan's hood in his hands, staring down at him with cold eyes. Four more men stood farther back, three black-clad from head to toe, one a forbidding dark-skinned man whose robes clearly set him in a position of power.

Slowly, Jonathan reached up and wiped blood from his face, refusing to buckle to the obvious powerplay. "I am Doctor Jonathan Crane," he said finally, when he felt his passive-aggressive defiance had been made clear. "I'm a resident psychiatrist at an asylum for the mentally unstable. I'm researching a fear-inducing chemical compound that I was told is manufactured from your blue flowers."

"And who, exactly, gave you this information?"

"Doctor-patient confidentiality," Jonathan replied calmly, pressing his sweaty palms against the rugs.

The grey-haired man looked as utterly cool and unaffected as the front Jonathan was trying to present, and his stare was piercing. At last, he said, "The drug you seek is a carefully guarded secret that Ra's al Ghul is not willing to let fall into the hands of criminals."

Jonathan smirked slightly. "It's already there. In any case, I'm not the one you need to keep it from."

"And why not?"

"I'm a scientist," Jonathan said, tilting his chin up just slightly. "I'm not looking to use your drug for personal gain, to sell or smoke. I study fear. All I seek now is the means to inflict it at will."

Jonathan met that frigid ice-coloured stare with cool regard, steeling himself and drawing on memories of his confidence in lecture halls and interview rooms, on the wellspring of mind-over-body control that fuelled the impervious grace of his quiet-voiced persona. He had been called cold, robotic, even eerie in the eyes of people who were slaves to their emotions.

There was no reason to fear. He hadn't been hurt yet, and if these men wanted him dead, then he would die. Fear would not change any of that.

Tilting his face away, the older man glanced over his shoulder in what his expression said was askance, but what his body language clearly said was no request whatsoever. There was a long moment of silence.

The robed man looked at the others present in the room. "Your presence is not required here," he said, his accent thick and unidentifiable. Then, to the grey-haired one, he added coldly, "Do what you must."

Jonathan watched numbly as the room emptied save for the grey-haired speaker. Then he lifted his eyes to meet that empty blue gaze once more. Almost to his surprise, he felt the slight arc of a reflexive sardonic eyebrow.

"You seek fear for fear's sake," the older man said slowly, his voice no lounder than a murmur. "You inflict it on others for the purest of purposes-- in order to study it. But why, exactly, do you seek such knowledge?"

"Knowledge for knowledge's sake."

Now it was the other man's turn to lift his eyebrows. He turned away with the shadow of a smirk tugging at one corner of his mouth. "Indeed, Doctor Crane. We shall see."

Crossing the room to a large cupboard built into the wall, he unlatched the doors and withdrew a number of objects with familiar ease-- a brass brazier, a tripod, a mortar and pestle, a small ivory-handled knife. Jonathan watched with shrewd eyes as the man selected ingredients from the cupboard, immediately decanting several drops of oil from a dark-amber bottle into the brazier, which was beginning to warm over a fat tallow candle.

"Tell me, Doctor," he said conversationally, "while your were studying the fears of others, did you ever conquer it in yourself?"

"Can it ever be _conquered_?" Jonathan retorted. "Fear is a survival reaction deeply ingrained in the human psyche over millenia. The Neanderthal that runs from a noise in the dark survives, and the one who investigates without hesitation is eaten. Evolution favours the fearful."

"Filling the world with hordes of weak-willed sheep that are easy prey to the true predators," the man finished sharply. His knife flashed in the candlelight, shredding thin slivers of pale-white flesh from the core of a gnarled root. They were flicked into the brazier with a lethal turn of the blade. "This is the world you favour?"

"I didn't say I favoured it," Jonathan said coolly. "I said that's how it is, as you clearly know."

"And you failed to answer my question. If 'conquer' is not the word you prefer, then how would you put it?"

"'Overcome' would be an acceptable term. The mind has inescapable power over the body. Two pounds of brain tissue secreting mere milligrams of chemicals control an entire body. Blind obedience to these chemical signals is the life of a sheep. Acting independently and even contrary to them, should one so choose... that's the choice of a fearless man."

"And are you fearless?"

Jonathan smiled thinly. "If I wasn't, I wouldn't very well admit it, would I."

"You don't have to," the man said quietly. He withdrew a small blue thistle from the folds of his sleeve, holding it up and studying it. In the candlelight, Jonathan saw that it was one of the handful he had picked on the lower steppe before he had been seized. He felt his heart clutch with sudden understanding when the flower fell from gloved fingers into the stone mortar. The crunch of dry petals beneath the pestle was very loud in the silent room. "I already know the answer."

 _Dry mouth and elevated heartbeat_ , Jonathan noted distantly. _Classic signs of the body preparing for a fight or flight reaction to danger. Fear of being subjected to debilitating and possibly incapacitating hallucinogenic neurotoxins_.

"You are afraid, Doctor Crane," the man said softly, tipping the powdered thistle into the brazier. With a faint crackle, white smoke curled from the hot dish immediately.

"Of course," agreed Jonatan emotionlessly.

Picking up the brazier in both hands, the older man carried it over to Jonathan and crouched before him, gloved fingers wrapped securely around the brass rim. Hardly breathing, Jonathan glanced down into the dish, where ashy powder and shreds of herb smoldered and crackled. The pungent scent of peppery smoke and pine oil evaporating off the hot metal crept into his lungs and his head spun.

Up close, the man's piercing eyes were blue and wintry, the frigid color of ice over deep water. "You don't show it."

"Of course," Jonathan whispered, and his voice shook only slightly. "But from one professional to another, you're welcome to try to make me."

He thought he caught a flicker of surprise in the man's face. "Breathe," came the quiet order.

Even as he spoke, Jonathan's ears roared without warning and his vision blacked for a flashing moment. He jerked in shock, heart suddenly racing.

Finding no trace of surprise at Jonathan's reaction in the man's composed expression, Jonathan sought discomfort or instability and found none. In such close quarters, surely they were inhaling the same drug, however shallowly they breathed. Perhaps the man had been desensitized to the hallucinogen through repeated exposure, or maybe he simply had the iron self-control of a machine. Either way, Jonathan was fascinated.

"I consider it good policy to know my physician's name before I take medication," Jonathan forced out, and over the pounding of blood in his ears he was surprised at how evenly his voice emerged.

Ah. That _was_ a flash of impressed acknowledgement, cool but present beneath the calm. "My name is Henri Ducard."

And, never breaking the unblinking blue stare, Jonathan breathed.


	2. Chapter 2

The stars rattled in the sky, clattering bones like broken glass. The horizon broke. Black ink poured into the oceans and swallowed the world whole.

All breath was punched from Jonathan's chest. His head snapped back, thudding against the wall as his eyes flew wide and stared into nothing. Mouth open, gasping desperately for air, he gulped another lungful of smoke and convulsed against the wall. His fingers clutched nervelessly at the furs. The thread of a broken whimper was coming from somewhere distant, somewhere beyond the roaring in his ears. The deafening thunder of black wings ripping the sky open drowned out all else.

Trembling violently, Jonathan ground his teeth together, trapping his tongue between clenching jaws. The scream clawing at his vocal cords was strangled in mental hands of self-control that crushed with the brutality of desperation. His eyes darted frantically back and forth, seeking tattered wings in pockets of shadow that clung to the rafters.

" _Breathe_."

Jarred by the voice, Jonathan's stare flew to Henri, his eyes white-rimmed and unblinking in terror. Having set the still-smoking dish aside, Henri knelt before him. Pits of blue fire burned in his face. Cringing back against the wall, Jonathan whimpered as Henri's dark clothing crawled with razor-sharp beaks and claws trying to tear their way out of his chest.

"What do you see?"

It was Henri's mouth moving, but his voice was the hoarse chatter of carrion crows feasting on a corpse.

"What do you fear, Doctor Crane?" Henri insisted, leaning forward.

 _Doctor_.

From another lifetime, a hook of recognition sank into Jonathan. _Doctor. Doctor Crane. I-- I am. Psychiatrist. Please take a seat. Doctor Crane will see you now_.

"Birds," Jonathan croaked, staring desperately at the stern line of Henri's mouth, the reality his senses had not yet distorted. A human voice came from human lips, and those were _human_. "Everywhere. Bones on the ground, picked clean. Rip out the eyes."

"Tell me," murmured Henri, and raised a hand to trail a gentle fingertip around the curve below Jonathan's left eye-- and a raven exploded from his sleeve in a flurry of knife-edged black feathers, slashing at Jonathan's face. He slammed back against the wall and screamed hoarsely, snatching at Henri's arm.

 _Human human human_ \--

Fingers wrapped tightly around Henri's wrist, nails digging into the back of the man's hand, Jonathan clutched his hand through the nightmare whirl of wings, reeling off a frantic mental torrent of reminders that the solid grip of flesh in his nerveless fists was _human human human_ and the birds were no more than a torrential downpour of misfiring synapses and chemical compounds and electrical impulses down blindfolded nerve pathways, sensory cues dug up from tortured archives of cerebral tissue and replayed by adrenaline-drunk neurons.

" _Tell me what you fear_ ," a terrible voice grated. Jonathan ground his teeth and whined, gripping Henri's hand so hard that the small bones of the other man's wrist creaked.

"It's not real," he gasped, fumbling blindly up Henri's arm. His fingers skidded over leather and canvas, sharp prongs of metal that bit at his fingers like beaks-- talons punching their way through the flesh of Henri's arm and snatching for him, scraping his skin and plucking for his eyes, his face, the slippery organs in the soft parts of his body--

Forcing his eyes open wide, Jonathan stared up at Henri, plastered back against the wall in a lock-jawed rictus of fear. Fighting every deafening thud of his heart and seizure of his muscles, Jonathan stretched out a trembling arm, his fingers rigid with cold and terror, and clumsily touched the stern line of Henri's mouth, numb fingertips skidding over chapped lips and stumbling into the scratch of his neat beard.

"Not. Real." His voice was hollow and echoing through wind-stripped glass crags that teemed with invisible hawks.

"Isn't it?" But it was Henri's lips moving beneath his fingers, Jonathan could feel it, and it was physically impossible for a bird's rasp to come from a man's throat and so it was _fake_ , all a lie of chemicals and irrational fear.

"No," rasped Jonathan. He fought a wave of nausea, his grip on Henri's jaw firming as he eased down the backside of the peak, his vision steadying and his ears clearing. Daring to draw a deeper breath, Jonathan met Henri's eyes with some semblance of stability. His throat worked hard as he swallowed, drowning in the blue of Henri's eyes. They flickered with an eerie inner light, like--

The sky cracked apart as another surge of terror crashed through Jonathan, ripping control and logic to tatters. The blue glint of Henri's eyes reflected off irridescent crow feathers, wings beating and smashing against his face as he hit the ground screaming, dust choking in his mouth and nose and burning his eyes as he clenched them tight against the onslaught, talons gouging his arms and hands as he tried to cover his face high-pitched screaming screaming breaking his vocal cords for _father mother grandda help me SOMEBODY HELP_ as the crows stabbed vicious blue bruises into his curled-up wounded-animal flesh and blood smeared from scratches looking sticky and dark on his flannel shirt as black wings blotted out the sun--

Blotted out the sun--

Black on the flannel shirt... coarse and warm against his face, buried into a hard-muscled shoulder with his own breath reflecting back warm and damp into his face, blood in his mouth and running down his face again... Tasting iron, Jonathan shuddered and clutched the fistfuls of stiff canvas harder; his heart worked spastically, _THUD-thud_ reverberating against his ribs aching with the pressure of a great weight on top of him, a bulky and uncomfortably armoured form with blood smeared on his shirt and collar and face, flecks of red darkening the steel-grey of his beard...

"What are you doing?" Jonathan croaked, his throat dry as sand.

"I've done no more or less than you forced me to," came Henri's reply, cool and composed. He neither pulled away nor pressed into the desperate clutch of Jonathan's arms. Adrenaline-dazed and achy, Jonathan forced himself to look down. Ah. That _was_ the back of Henri's shirt he was clinging to.

"So," Henri said quietly, his eyes sharp and triumphant with knowing, " _this_ is why Doctor Jonathan Crane studies what he does. This is what you really seek as you delve into the depths of man's fear."

"So it would seem," Jonathan observed vaguely. "How interesting." He dropped his head back against the pile of furs, staring blankly into the quavering winged shadows of the rafters, and tried to think past the dull throb below the pit of his stomach. His arousal brimmed beneath borderline-panicked fright like lava oozing from cracks in the base of an underwater volcano, hot and molten beneath the churning cold black ocean surface.

 _Sexual arousal stemming from neurotoxin-induced hallucinations. Possibly a result of the brain tissue being overwhelmed by chemicals that mimic and induce a panic reaction from the body, similar to the chemical signals which result from strenuous exercise and sexual activity_.

Slowly, Jonathan uncurled the clenched fingers of one hand, spreading out his palm flat against Henri's back. He could feel hard muscle even through the thick clothing, heavy wools and furs and waterproof canvas offering necessary protection from the harsh Tibetan winter. Henri didn't move, true to his word not to do a thing Jonathan didn't demand as a result of-- or in spite of-- his drugged state.

 _Either this is a psychological connection between sexual excitement and loss of control, such as in submissive practitioners of BDSM... or... or the unconscious association of fear experimentation with dominance over the test subject, even if_ I _am the subject at this time_.

Jonathan's breath hitched and evened again as his heart tripped erratically, riding spikes of chemicals pouring unbridled into his bloodstream. He closed his eyes momentarily, sliding a shaking hand up the plane of Henri's back until his fingers found the nape of the other man's neck, brushing skin and then short-cropped hair-- soft fine hair like the whisper-blades of an owl's silent plumage that made Jonathan convulse without warning, a strangled cry ripping from his throat. When the spasm passed, shaky control reasserting itself over the illogic of fear, he found himself gripping a fistful of Henri's hair tightly enough to tear some from the scalp.

Henri's eyes burned, but without discomfort or judgement. He was... he was _studying_ Jonathan. His blue-steel eyes were dissecting every flinch and whimper, every trip of his heart, and seeking the subconscious motivations behind every reaction that made Jonathan clutch him tighter. Wading deeper and deeper into the unknown territory that was Henri Ducard and Ra's al Ghul's drug, Jonathan scrabbled for his train of thought, grasping for his own science.

 _Or-- or maybe a subconscious attempt of the id to associate debilitating fear with sexual excitement, in order to protect the ego from... from mental damage resulting from prolonged intense fright_.

His eyelids flickering as a tremor of fear ran through him, Jonathan felt his pants grow tighter. Whimpering, he fumbled his hand around the curve of Henri's head, thumb pressing the dip at his skull's base, fingers tangling into grey-silver locks. His teeth chattered.

"You are a powerful man," Henri murmured. Jonathan's hypersensitive senses felt him shift, Henri's elbows bearing harder into the pile of furs as he adjusted his weight slightly. "To have developed such mastery over the senses takes years. More dangerous men than you have broken beneath this drug."

"I think I am," Jonathan mumbled, his lips moving without consent. He was dimly aware of his entire body trembling uncontrollably, and he pulled Henri closer, trying to bury himself beneath the crush of muscle and armour and sheer self-control. "Breaking. Broken. They break bones on the rocks to get at the marrow. Oh god. A-ah-- unh... no, n-no. Not that. Not broken."

"No?" The current of Henri's breath washed cool over Jonathan's neck, already feverish with sweat. Jonathan choked on a cry and forced Henri's head to his shoulder, clawing hair from his scalp.

"Yes!" he sobbed, as crows mobbed him in lurching flashes, heavy beaks stabbing at the exposed flesh he tried to hide beneath Henri. Desperate for an anchor, a shield, a distraction, Jonathan spread his legs and gripped Henri's hips with his thighs, his breath coming in wheezing sobs. "Oh god, please, yes, yes..."

"Yes _what_?" Henri demanded, and it was the first time his voice was anything but low and smooth. A growl, a snarl, a nerve-grating caw that made Jonathan _throb_ with arousal, and all Jonathan could think of the hands gripping his sides with bone-breaking strength was, _I didn't make him put those there_.

"Anything. Please. Yes, do it. I want it. This is what I want. _Ah_! N-no, no, don't let them... get them away! Please!"

"Confront your fear," Henri growled, and his hands were stripping away Jonathan's jacket, opening zippers and snaps to bare his chest to the mob waiting to glut on his insides, a feast of guts and sinews still steaming hot for the carrion scavengers. Jonathan stifled a scream, trying to shield himself, but Henri bore down hard, pinning him. Those weren't human hands-- they were chains, manacles-- Prometheus on the rock, his liver plucked out daily by an eagle--

No. No, no. That was mythology. Greek. Ninth-grade English that had given Jonathan nightmares for weeks. And this was Henri. And his lips tasted bloody, teeth so sharp against Jonathan's tongue that Jonathan nearly recoiled howling like it was Henri that had ripped out his liver, but then the tongue sliding into his mouth was slippery and human, so human, and that sensation was no drug-induced waking dream.

Henri tore away from the kiss, leaving Jonathan to bite desperately along his jaw and throat as Henri pulled off his shirt, yanking it down and trapping his arms in the sleeves. Restrained and panicked anew, Jonathan trembled helplessly as Henri forced his head up with a hand at the throat, his expression hard, fierce.

"If you seek to inflict fear, you must first master your own. Face it. Take it into you and make it a part of yourself. Make yourself a part of _it_. _Become_ what you fear. Drown in it, and die, and find the will to bring yourself back to life as a fearless man."

Jonathan's lips worked soundlessly. Henri's eyes were cold and drowning-deep, swallowing him whole.

"Yes," Jonathan croaked again. "Yes."

"Become your fear," Henri ordered again, settling onto Jonathan like a panther on prey, wrapping powerful arms around him and burying his face in Jonathan's neck. Teeth puncuated his throat, sharp, bloodletting for the flock-- and with bloodless knuckles and trembling bones, Jonathan stared blindly over Henri's shoulder into the abyss of black feathers and clutched the predator closer.

Hands moved down his body, confident as they bared his skin to cold air that made Jonathan shiver, relentless as they found his hips, his thighs, and pulled his legs wider still. Sweat rolling down his face, Jonathan arched up against Henri as his pants were yanked down, tangling around his knees. His thighs quivered as Henri stroked gloved hands over them, still fully clothed to Jonathan's state of vulnerable exposure.

One glove came off. Jonathan cringed from the garment as it was thrown carelessly onto the furs next to Jonathan's head, a black and ragged shape that flashed through the air too near to his face, but Henri's eyes were still full of that analytical ferocity, pushing and prodding Jonathan for reactions. His fingers like claws, Jonathan snatched for the crow and crushed it, felt the worn leather in his fist, and gasped with triumphant relief as the bird was reduced back to a glove.

"Never shrink from it," growled Henri, turning Jonathan's face up to look at him. Wide-eyed and quivering, Jonathan bit at Henri's fingers and took them into his mouth without being asked, swallowing bile and greedily sucking the callused fingers deeper, two and then three stretching his jaw open until he choked. His eyes overflowed with pained tears as spit leaked down his chin, but Jonathan continued to suck doggedly at Henri's fingers until they were withdrawn, dripping with saliva.

"Don't scream," Henri ordered.

"I'm not afraid," whispered Jonathan, his voice trembling.

"Of course you are," Henri retorted, and the press of his fingers made Jonathan's entire body clench like a rope snapped taut, his spine arching. "But you won't be." And he pushed harder, demanding things which Jonathan's will offered while his body refused to submit. Choking on a sob, Jonathan found the glove again and clamped his teeth shut on it and forced his legs open wider even as a shock of pain jolted up his spine, wondering in a juddering disjointed blur if Prometheus had ever willingly surrendered his flesh to the eagle in an attempt to lessen the inevitable agony.

Whining and gasping against the sour-tasting worn leather, Jonathan felt his eyes stinging. His hands flew up without consent when an unbearable spike of pain ran through him, clawing for the older man's face, chest, anything, but Henri's weight was crushing and his actions were inescapable. His hand-- his fingers-- and rooks chattered deafeningly in Jonathan's ears as Henri spread him open, the high staccato of Jonathan's cries dying unheeded against the leather gag. And it hurt hurt _hurt_ like nothing else had, white and raw and unprepared, every crook of strong fingers like the stab of the eagle's beak into unwilling flesh, and even though Jonathan was willing, _willing_ more than anything because his whole body was still pounding with _need_ , none of it eased the pain any.

"Take it," breathed Henri, and Jonathan moaned a syllable against the gag, an agreement, a submission. Salty tears stung the cut on his lip as they poured down his face, and metal-blue eyes widened momentarily, and in that moment Jonathan knew why Henri Ducard did as _he_ did.

Suddenly and without a word of warning, Henri flipped Jonathan onto his stomach, a mere twist and jerk of the arm throwing Jonathan's entire world end over end. Face buried in coarse sheepskin, Jonathan thrashed against Henri's hold, tangled in the battering wings of a mob, crushed against the dusty ground that smelled like-- smelled like oil and herbs and old sweat, not farm dust, not feathers and carrion-stench, and Jonathan inhaled it frantically, rubbing his face raw against the rough hide.

Henri bore down hard behind him, pressing Jonathan's chin and chest into the furs. The press of his body was monumental, like the unstoppable grinding drift of continental plates.

"Do not scream," Henri said again, in little more than a harsh whisper, and pushed.

Sobbing uncontrollably and wracked with shivers in a tangled skein of lust and need and waking nightmares, Jonathan bit down on the hysterical howls that wanted to tear from his chest, helplessly arching back against every brutal thrust that plunged Henri deep into him, pitiless and invasive, carnal and overwhelming. The world was a matter of Henri's heat, Henri's powerful callused hands on his hips, Henri's lips and tongue and teeth burning the back of his neck with kisses and bites against straining muscles that jumped in shock with every touch. His teeth rattling with the force of every thrust, all air crushed from his fear-strangled lungs, Jonathan bore the maelstrom on his back in a haze of delirious mind-numbing bone-melting heat until his teeth broke deep into his lip and blood poured down his throat and his body convulsed in release and his lungs burned and his eyes rolled up and the world went black in a tumble of smothering inky feathers.

*

Jonathan woke to warmth and blurry gold candlelight, and the drift of warm steam against his face. Opening his eyes slowly, he found himself laying on the mound of furs, wrapped tightly in bearskin, a sleek silver pelt folded beneath his head like a pillow. A fired clay mug of tea sat on the floorboards in front of his face, steaming gently. Jonathan clumsily thrust an arm from the furs and reached for it without thinking, cotton-mouthed and ravenously thirsty. The simple movement woke such a chorus of aches in every joint of his body that his eyes watered.

It was only after he had gulped half the mug's contents, bitter but lukewarm enough to soothe his stripped throat, that Jonathan realised he was not alone. Lifting his eyes warily, Jonathan met Henri's cool, appraising stare with his own.

"Ra's al Ghul has decreed that you should be allowed to continue your experiments with the blue flowers," Henri said quietly, sipping his own tea. "But the League of Shadows will be watching your every move. We will know everything you do with this drug, and if we deem it necessary, we will not hesitate to take back what belongs to us."

"And at exactly what point would you deem it 'necessary' to stop my work?" Jonathan asked with faint acid, his voice steady but hoarse.

"The point where your actions became criminal."

"Criminal in the eyes of the law?" Despite himself, Jonathan smirked thinly. "Those are broad boundaries indeed."

"The laws of society are riddled with loopholes which criminals thrive upon," said Henri sharply, his eyes flashing. "You will answer to the League's law, and, if it comes to that point, to my sword."

Jonathan's smirk faded.

"Does this hinder your plans?" Henri inquired softly.

"Actually, I had planned to conduct a number of experiments which are immoral and unquestionably illegal in the eyes of the _law_ , including the eventual incitement of widespread panic and chaos on an open population of civilians." Jonathan arched an eyebrow, inwardly shocked at his own fearless runaway tongue, a thin smile playing around his bruised mouth. "Purely to study the basic internal reactions of a common citizen to the hardened criminals of Gotham city's worst slums. Or... does this not meet your approval?"

But rather than what Jonathan had expected, Henri's expression was struck somewhere between surprise and knife-edged cutthroat interest.

"On the contrary, Doctor Crane," he said softly, something terrible and pleased lurking behind eyes that glinted like cold blue diamonds. "Ra's al Ghul will be awaiting the results of your research very eagerly, indeed."


End file.
